I don’t read Daniel Pinkwater books with my critic hat on. (Who am I kidding, I don’t read any story like that. If I find myself thinking scholarly thoughts, they had better be about nonfiction.)
It’s particularly nice to read Pinkwater because I can be eleven years old again. His heroes and heroines think the thoughts I had then but didn’t dare to acknowledge, such as, invariably they have parents who mean well, but oh good grief. Luckily they have extended family like a crazed inventor uncle or a world explorer grandfather or, in this case, a witchy aunt who can take up slack. In Jules, Penny & the Rooster, Jules also has an older sister who is as usual partly annoying but turns out to be a genius, not just academically, but a genius at working their parents. The sister makes it possible for Jules to accept the prize she has just won in a contest for writing the best letter about why she should be awarded the dog.
The contest is rigged.
Jules gets the dog, who may or may not be a legendary golden wolf, and befriends a fierce-looking rooster, and finds an enchanted forest squirreled away back behind her suburban housing development, like most of us did, but then things get weird.
Familiar characters and magical symbols emerge, such as guys with fur all over and a sacred turtle, but that’s all I’m going to say. Pinkwater seems not so much to be recycling effects as layering in important messages to the reader that are deeply thematic in his work, such as, if you find a little turtle thingy hold onto it, it’s probably important, and trust cats. I haven’t forgotten how loaded with Cabalistic structures Borgel is … waidaminit, that’s my scholar brain. Okay, I lied. Pinkwater makes me think those thoughts too. After I’ve read the book three or four times.
Lest any parents of eleven-year-olds out there worry about what their kid is being exposed to, may I say, NOTHING TERRIBLE HAPPENS. I approve of this in Pinkwater. No innocents are damaged. No villain dies horribly. But I bet you still can’t put it down.
The main thing is, you don’t have to be a student of Medieval science to absorb the themes of transcendence and astral signposts provided in this great man’s work. Just read it like an eleven-year-old. In fact, that probably makes it better.
Tachyon (2025)
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Like Daniel Pinkwater, Jennifer Stevenson makes a strong effort not to murder anyone in her books, but unlike him, she writes a boatload of NSFW entertainment. Starting with magical realism Trash, Sex, Magic and touching the pinnacle of do-gooderism with Coed Demon Sluts, she just wants to help her characters get where they are going with the maximum of well-meaning idiocy. These are goals to aim for.
